


Breathing Room

by zade



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Aftercare, Bondage, Breathplay, Bruises, Ice Play, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Mention of bloodplay, Nipple Clamps, Nipple Torture, One-Sided Relationship, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Post-Season/Series 02, Rope Bondage, Safe Sane and Consensual, Safewords, Scars, Whipping, mention of murder, teacup metaphors abound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 22:57:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2446235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zade/pseuds/zade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More often than not when they play, it’s with Chilton tied down and laid out before him.  He likes the feel of ropes, likes them holding him together, can’t handle cuffs or zip ties.  Too close to the toolbox of serial killer, perhaps.</p><p>Really filthy porn with a side of some angst</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathing Room

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to tumblr user hateboners for the beta and for being a pal
> 
> warnings/enticements: bondage, heavy bruise play, belt whipping, nipple torture, heavy breath play, intercrural sex, discussion of blood play but no actual, discussion of murder but no actual so far, super unhealthy relationships with Hannibal, one-sided relationships, minor safewording, somehow super safe/sane/consensual, teacup metaphors everywhere

It’s nothing like domestic bliss. They are neither of them young men, but Will is slightly younger, just so enough that Frederick is never at ease about the creases that line his body and the curves where in his younger days there was nothing but lean muscle. He used to feel powerful.

Will likes giving him power, but likes taking it more. More often than not when they play, it’s with Chilton tied down and laid out before him. He likes the feel of ropes, likes them holding him together, can’t handle cuffs or zip ties. Too close to the toolbox of serial killer, perhaps.

“Like a sacrificial lamb,” Frederick says as Will binds limb to limb. His wrists are tied behind him at his neck, connected to the four rings of rope that rest around his throat. His shoulders begin to ache at once but if he moves his wrists he will surely choke himself. A battle of wills that Frederick is meant to lose.

“Not quite,” Will says and supplicates himself before him.

The scar on Frederick’s cheek radiates little streams of scar like a chipped porcelain doll; crater, cracks. He was handsome once. People say distinguished now, which Frederick thinks is the polite form of ugly. Will thinks he’s beautiful. He hopes it’s not because the hurt mark on Frederick’s face serves as a reminder of Hannibal, the vicarious scar he managed to plant.

The teacup didn’t shatter on impact. It still could at any minute, but Will finds it easier to hold something together than to try and rebuild it from dust.

Frederick’s face is pink, slowly becoming red. It would take a lot more to strangle him, but even the idea of restricted breath has tightened his airways and he breathes shallowly. Will binds his calves to his thighs, ankles to the tops of his legs, presses long kisses to the sensitive insides of Frederick’s thighs, which cause him to squirm, ticklish.

Frederick comes apart so willingly beneath his hands. Will is a deconstructer. Hannibal made things, but Will was always good at separating the pieces, picking things apart until he understood them.

Frederick doesn’t understand anything. He is tied down, but Will is on his knees before him. He is malleable but Will doesn’t want to make anything from him.

“Jesus,” Frederick moans, voice heavy, once Will has finished the tie.

Will smiles and rubs stubble burn onto Frederick’s thigh. “How do you feel?” he asks, but he knows. He has already taken Frederick apart, he knows that it makes him feel like he’s flying and like he has done something wrong and like he doesn’t deserve this and like he deserves to feel normal and if Will is doing this because he cares or as a form of punishment.

If Will was a better man he would tell Frederick the answers to these things unprompted. Will is a not a very good person. Neither is Frederick.

“Like drowning.”

Will reaches out with a firm hand, and brushes the cracked scar on Frederick’s face and Frederick jerks back violently. The motion pulls the rope around his neck and he grunts. For a moment he doesn’t breathe. Will watches his face, pale now, and fat with trapped blood, suffocating.

Will cups Frederick’s wrists, pulls them in close to his neck, drags him up, holds the weight of him in his arms. The position strains Frederick’s shoulders, but the rope is loose around his neck and Frederick takes a large shuddering gasp.

“Are you going to kill me, Mr. Graham?” Frederick asks. His voice sounds bruised, as if the marks on his neck were laid directly on his vocal chords.

“Are you going to let me, Dr. Chilton?”

Frederick doesn’t say, “I’d let you do anything to me,” but Will hears it, feels it, buzzing along the lines of Frederick’s skin like static. A shock.

He lets Frederick drop. Will is panting now, and he straddles Frederick’s bound thighs, fully dressed. Frederick turns away, hiding his face in his arm, but his face is growing pink again, roped pulled taut against his throat. He is shamefully hard. 

Will notices. “Do you want to come?”

“Do I get to?” Frederick’s voice is strangled, muffled by his arm.

There are deep cracks in Frederick, and through them shine his shame, his want. Will holds him together. “Hmm. I’ll let you know.”

Frederick begins to shake beneath him. He is not in danger of passing out, but the mind plays tricks. Will knows this. Hannibal taught him. Frederick taught him. Will thinks, a taste of his own medicine. There are tears at the corner of Frederick’s eyes. 

Will doesn’t want to break him. His fingers find Frederick’s nipples, squeeze them between his nails with all the force he has. Frederick whines, breathy and faint, eyes creased from the pressure of keeping them so closed; beneath his eyes are wet. Will wants to hurt him.

When he releases, Frederick’s nipples are a bright pink, flushed, and dented with jagged nail marks. Will bites his nails, habitually. Will bites Frederick’s thigh, the first time. He looks delectable—delicious—divine—no, no not those words. Hannibal has tainted every term that Will could use for food and people. No, Frederick looks small and human and vulnerable, muscles strained tight like the statue of Jesus on the cross at the church that Will’s father had taken him to as a child. Will prays.

“What do you want?”

Frederick summons his voice, turns his head back to Will, his shoulders burning and his thighs throbbing, on fire. Like Freddie Lounds. Or Not-Freddie-Lounds, as it were. Still, burning. “More, please.” His voice sounds like it will be sore for days.

Will hopes it is, that he’ll leave a mark against Frederick’s skin, like Hannibal on his stomach. Like Abel Gideon and Miriam Lass left on Frederick’s cheek and in his guts. “Be specific,” Will suggests, running his ragged nails up and down Frederick’s stomach and leaving bright red welts.

“Hurt me, please.”

It would be so easy to destroy him. Will holds the teacup in his hand. If he drops it, there will be nothing left. Smashed into too many pieces to reassemble; humpty dumpty, helter skelter. Hannibal had run reckless through their lives. Will tries to move with more care. 

Will removes his belt.

“Jesus,” Frederick groans, closing his eyes and biting his lower lip hard.

Will stripes his inner thighs, first. There are raised red ridges up and down his thighs which are blotchy and pink and they burn when Will rubs his nails along them. He leaves the belt for a second and digs his nails into Frederick’s nipples again. He tightens his hold and Frederick bucks, tries to shake him off, gasping and flexing against his binds.

“No, oh fuck, please no more I can’t take it, I can’t. Please.”

Will digs in harder.

“Oh no, oh fuck, no no no no.” Frederick is breathless, truly breathless now, struggling for air, neck thrown backwards in an exaggerated arc. He twists beneath Will, and his shoulders tremble with the effort of keep his arms still. His arms are beginning to go numb.

Will is smiling. Frederick begins crying in earnest when Will gets to whipping his thighs again. He holds the belt, folding it over and laying into Frederick’s inner thighs, back and forth until Frederick’s thighs are speckled, his skin purple and black, and Frederick is sobbing and shaking, face pink and cock dripping onto the scar on his belly. Before Hannibal, will would have said he abhorred violence.

Will would prefer to cut him, prefer the parting of his skin and the taste of blood which Hannibal taught his tongue to love, but Frederick has panic attacks at the sight of blood. Will understands that. He knows now how impossible it is to get over holding your intestines in your own hands. He wasn’t disemboweled in the same way Frederick was, but he has an idea now. Will wants to hurt him, but he doesn’t want to break him. He settles for blood pooling beneath the surface. It will hurt more this way, anyway.

Frederick looks lost. Will likes the look, likes how Frederick is crying and shaking but how his eyes track every one of his movements. He arches his back, curved; if he hits the ground he will shatter. Frederick quakes. His thighs will be a mess for days, if he’s lucky, possibly weeks. Good.

Will slaps the belt on his palm and Frederick flinches. “You might want to brace yourself.”

The belt makes a louder sound on his chest. Frederick’s abdomen is still tender, so Will pauses between each strike to make sure they will land squarely his pecs, and miss the scarred stretch of his stomach.

When Frederick turns his head away, he hides his unscarred cheek. Will likes that, likes that he has Frederick so wound up that he doesn’t even remember to hide his scar. Sometimes he still wears bandages over it. Will wants to kiss it, wants to claim Hannibal’s mark, but he knows that would destroy Frederick’s headspace, so he doesn’t.

Frederick grunts, open mouthed, with each hit. He doesn’t alternate, striking one side over and over before he switches to the other. Frederick’s nipples are bright red and hot, and tbe skin surrounding them is speckled pink and bruised.

Will settles himself between Frederick’s bound knees and spreads them farther with his own. Frederick gasps. He is still crying and sniffling, his face embarrassingly damp.

Will realizes how hard he is and sighs. Will had never imagined being the do-er, content, with Hannibal, to be done and undone, although Hannibal had never touched him like this. The violence inherent in their relationship had been strictly non-sexual, however blatantly implied it had been. Will found he liked the sexual aspect with Frederick more that he thought he would.

“Wait, Will, wait, yellow—”

Will stops, can barely hear anything over the pounding of his own heart echoing in his head. Frederick has never called red, but yellow is used with some regularity. It doesn’t change the fact that every time Frederick says it, Will feels for a moment like all the serial killers he’s ever chased. Not just a bad person but a Bad Guy, the kind he lectures on.

Will puts a hand on Frederick’s cheek, directs his eyes back to Will’s. His face is clammy and pink and his eyes are red. “What’s wrong, Frederick?”

“I can’t breathe well,” Frederick says, and Will immediately tugs at the ropes around his neck, trying to see if they’re snagged on something. One of the loops is stuck around Frederick’s hand, Will can see it, one line pulling tighter around his neck than the other three. He reaches for his knife, sitting on the nightstand, and slices through the ropes binding Frederick’s hands and neck.

Frederick coughs, then takes a heavy breath, and then another. His arms are shaking but he doesn’t move them from behind his head, looking straight at Will. Will smiles at him. Frederick is surprisingly obedient. He sniffles, but doesn’t go to wipe his eyes or nose.

Frederick has been in control of so many things for so many years. The cameras covering every inch of the hospital, even the impersonal clean of Frederick’s house, every thing in its place, everything orderly, everything clean. Will is pretty sure that Frederick likes his house because it’s chaotic and out of his control. Frederick tries, neatening Will’s pantry or trying to vacuum, but inevitably he can’t make a difference. Sisyphus, trying to keep a home with fifteen dogs free of shedding.

“Stretch your arms out, Dr. Chilton.”

He does, slowly, unfurling his arms and groaning as the sore muscles stretch. Will removes the broken rope, winds it. Some of the pieces are still in usable lengths, and there is more in the table beside the bed. 

“Do you want to stop?” Will knows Frederick doesn’t. Even without his gift of empathy, Frederick is vibrating with energy, excitement, want.

“No, Mr. Graham.” His voice is tight, bruised.

Will wants to make him suffer, wants to make him hurt; wants his muscles to burn with tension and his face to burn with humiliation. He wants to break him, but he can’t, no won’t. He is in control, too. Of a classroom, of his home, of himself. He runs his nails up Frederick’s thighs and Frederick groans. “What do you want?”

Frederick rolls his shoulders and then laughs, and his voice is even more hoarse than it was. “That’s a little broad. What are my options?”

Will is aware, again, of how hard he is. He wants to fuck Frederick. He’s going to. “I can untie you, fuck you, and you can come in my mouth.”

Frederick shivers, practically purrs. He is still hard. “I want that one.” He moves his hands down to his chest, feels the ridges and heat of his bruises and welts, and smiles. Then he frowns. “What’s my other choice?”

Will runs his hands absently over Frederick’s bruises. “I tie you up again. Find something nice to decorate your chest with. Maybe I’ll suck you off. Find a nice place on your body to get off. Then I’ll decide if I want to let you come.”

Frederick sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. “Shit. Will I get to come though?”

“I’ll decide. What do you want more? To let me take control and hurt you? Or to come?”

Frederick whines, high pitched and needy. “Fuck fuck fuck. Okay. Okay, green, I’m good to go.”

Will likes the colors. He likes the excitement and apprehension when Frederick says green. “And your decision?”

“There are some clothes pins in the laundry room. And some binder clips in my bag.”

Will ties his arms down first. He ropes Frederick’s wrists to the ties at the top his legs, wraps rope around his torso and ties his arms above the elbow down to his chest. He scoots down the bed and links the ropes between Frederick’s thighs. Frederick struggles, rocking in his binds. He is pinned; bundled. 

He likes the struggle, likes the choice. Too much of his life has been in Hannibal’s hands, in Jack Crawford’s. Will gets that. He thinks in many ways he and Frederick are birds of a feather, but he would never admit that. The need in Frederick’s eyes is scary enough without him reinforcing it. Frederick is almost certainly using Will, but Will is pretty sure that using someone for physical company is not as bad as using someone as a stand-in for a serial killer who ruined his life and who he is pretty sure he’s not supposed to miss despite the clenching of his chest every time someone says Hannibal.

They are neither of them good people.

“You didn’t leave me much of a choice, you know,” Will says as he leans over off the bed to Frederick’s bag, which is sitting beside Will’s aftercare cooler—cold water is always a plus after a scene.

Frederick stops his struggling for a moment. “Oh no?”

Will rummages blindly in the bag, smiling at Frederick in a way he finds ominous. “I can’t very well leave you alone in here, all tied up and defenseless while I go all the way to laundry room.”

Frederick laughs nervously and closes his eyes in anticipation. “Fuck. I—fuck.”

There are two binder clips of the same size, the medium ones which Will can’t help but wonder if Frederick put there intentionally. He knows from testing them absently on his own fingers, that these will bite the most. Frederick is very intentional, methodical even, when he’s not frazzled. Will can see him putting the clips in the bag, hand reaching towards his dick, a twinge, a heat in his veins.

Frederick takes a few nervous breaths and Will can see the bruises beginning to form on his neck, red and raw. Will places the clips and Frederick shouts, hoarse, and bucks up, tugging at his bonds.

His hands clench and unclench, struggling. He’s crying again, sobbing and shaking.

Will likes it. Will kneels at the foot of the bed and watches him cry, shoulders lifting off the bed as he tries to tug his hands free. Will can almost, for a moment, see the appeal of killing like this. Of making that fear linger and be the last thing he feels. He understands his design, what it would be, how he would kill. 

Frederick has stopped rocking. His chest shakes with sobs, the clips shaking along with his chest, frenzied but beginning to calm. His cock is leaking against his scar, twitching with every heartbeat.

Will reaches towards his chest, and Frederick flinches. “I haven’t even touched anything yet,” Will admonishes. He pauses above him, hovers, looks him over. Frederick’s legs are trembling, tied so close together that the black on his thighs rub. He keeps staring. Frederick tries to avert his gaze again, but he doesn’t have his arm to hide behind anymore.

“Enjoy what you see?” Frederick mutters, and Will keeps staring.

Despite his age, the softening of his body, the wrinkles forming, he is strong, still young, still alarmingly handsome, and Will likes that he has such a striking man in his bed who can’t even see the appeal of himself. Likes that even looking makes Frederick feel like he’s being vivisected again. That for him, Will’s eyes are sharp as a scalpel. Abel Gideon’s knife did the damage first, Will is just tracing the lines. It’s hard to cut scarred skin; it gets tougher from wear. Frederick clenches his jaw—he tries to be tough. He has been split in two, he should be stronger now. 

Will is smiling when he reaches forward and flicks one of the clips.

Frederick’s eyes squeeze tight, jaw still clenched. He wants to scream but doesn’t. Still. Will uses every hurt, every thing Freddie writes about him, every feeling Hannibal inflicted on him, every subtle rejection Alana threw at him, to make armor. He got stronger. Frederick is like a starfish; his only method of protection is giving pieces of himself away.

Will does it again, and then again, over and over until Frederick finally opens his eyes and screeches, “Stop! Please!” so Will doesn’t. Not until the skin of his pecs are bright pink and Frederick’s breathing is congested with tears.

Will stops, reaches down between them and strokes Frederick’s cock, which is leaking a steady pool onto his stomach. He moves his hand slowly. When Frederick bucks his hips, Will removes his fingers. He is in control. “I think I’m going to fuck you.”

Will reaches lower, fingers gliding over Frederick’s balls, trapped between his bound thighs. He rubs the bruises and the welts, pressing harder, until Fredrick groans.

Frederick sniffles, then clears his throat. “I can’t exactly turn myself over.”

Will keeps rubbing the bruises between Frederick’s legs, putting sharp pressure on them. They are pressed so closely together there is barely room for Will’s fingers between them. “No,” he says softly and likes watching Frederick shudder. “I think I’m going to fuck you right here.” He digs his nails in and watches Frederick wince, before removing his hand and reaching over to nightstand to grab a jar of Vaseline. 

Frederick relaxes into the tie, and his cock twitches. “What about me? Do I get to come?”

Will’s hand falters on the tub of Vaseline. He smiles. Frederick vibrates with excitement, but Will doesn’t answer him. He unzips his pants, but doesn’t take them off. He slicks himself up, then the space between Frederick’s thighs, roughly. He closes the lid, and puts it down on the floor, next to his cooler. He reaches into it and removes a small, rectangular ice pack, and puts it on the bed next to him where Frederick can’t see. 

The penetration isn’t typical, and Will likes that. This can be his design. Frederick’s thighs are so tender that the intrusion has him wincing and bucking, trying to move away. Every thrust makes grunt, a sharp exhale, as it brushes his bruises and his balls.

Will runs his fingers across the fracture on Frederick’s cheek.

He bites out, barely, “Can I come?”

Will keeps thrusting as he reaches over and palm the icepack. He says, “No,” right before he shoves the icepack between Frederick’s balls and dick and uses his other hand to cover Frederick’s mouth right before he screams.

“Take a deep breath,” Will tells him, and then covers his nose, too. Will keeps thrusting. He can feel the ice through his shirt on the skin of his stomach, and can only imagine how much it must sting on Frederick’s rapidly wilting erection.

Frederick buck and shakes, trying to breathe through Will’s hand. Will can feel the suction of it on his palm, and Frederick’s thighs squeeze tighter together as his whole body tightens, trying to get a breath.

Will doesn’t let him though. He can see in the panic in Frederick’s eyes, but he doesn’t safe word. His thighs squeeze even tighter and begin to tremble. Will thinks he may never fuck Frederick any other way. With his empty hand, he removes the clips from Frederick’s chest, and leans down to bite the bruised skin.

Frederick has started to make little strangled noises that get caught in his throat, nowhere to go. Will thinks about Matthew, trying to kill Hannibal, choking him. He bites down harder. Every muscle in Frederick’s body tenses and the feeling is so good that Will is coming, and only after he is spent does he remove his hand and let Frederick pant and gasp.

He rolls off of Frederick and catches his breath. 

“I swear to god if you don’t take that icepack off my dick immediately, I’ll kick your ass so hard—” and it’s funny in part because of the threat, but also because of how sore and raspy his voice is.

Will laughs and reaches out blindly, hitting his stomach and his thigh before finding the offending object and throwing it across the room. “Would you like to be untied now?”

Frederick squirms. “Thirty more seconds. And you owe me, big time.”

“Because I didn’t let you come?” Will rolls over and begins to work at the knots. “Wake-up blowjob tomorrow.”

Frederick winces as he begins to stretch out his sore limbs. He is almost not sure why he does this. “And….?”

Will laughs again, and kisses him, gently on the mouth. It’s not a thing he does often, because when he pulls away, Frederick has this stupid dazed look on his face. “And I’ll give you a massage and put ointment on your bruises, and I’ll make that weird awful vegan mac and cheese you like.”

Frederick laughs too, hoarse but genuine. “Aw, you do care.” Finally untied, Frederick rolls onto his side, wincing as his thighs collide, before splaying them. He reaches down, lazily, and pokes at the black and blue lining his legs.

Will hovers for a second. “Nap or a massage first? And you have to drink some water either way.”

“Nap,” Frederick mutters, already drifting off.

Will rolls his eyes. He spoons up behind Frederick, wraps an arm loosely around his waist. 

It’s nothing like domestic bliss, but that’s okay. Will’s one chance at a family died with Abigail. The only one he could imagine was one with Hannibal, and that was so far beyond unreachable now, Will wonders how he ever thought it attainable. This is different, better in some ways. They are using each other. There’s fondness there, genuine fondness now after many months, at the heart of it all, they are both filling cracks in themselves with each other. But it’s good, which is good, and what more could Will want? It’s simple. 

Frederick hums happily in his sleep. “Love you,” he murmurs. 

Maybe not as simple as he thought. Frederick scoots his body towards him, a sunflower towards the light.

Will doesn’t sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> prepare for some angst and plot apparently? also if you wanna be a beta/cheerleader/fan-friend you should hit me up here or at my tumblr racetrackthehiggins
> 
> haha just kidding that's going to be a separate fic


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